yes / In this article, we suggest that our semiotic understanding of embodiment could be expanded to include a socially exalted individual who embodies a symbol. To illustrate this argument, we draw on an ongoing research project that examines fandom rhetoric and debates around the ‘Greatest of all time’ or the GOAT symbol in Tennis. Grounding Bakhtin’s tri-distinctions of identity, I-for-myself, I-for-other, other-for-me, in a Kantian hermeneutic tradition, we perform a theoretically informed analysis of the GOAT debate. Neither of the three components exists in isolation, rather, they interact in a reflexive dialogue which continually shapes and re-shapes individual consciousness and experiences of embodiment. We apply a ‘Romanticism aesthetic activity’ analytical framework to the tri-distinctions of identity, that consists of ‘creative’ and ‘critical’ rhetoric, within which we found genres of ‘myth,’ ‘art,’ and ‘science.’ Each genre functions, through disparate means to exalt or metamorphise an individual (our focus is on Roger Federer) into a cultural symbol, and that the symbolic form of GOAT reflexively organises the emotional field and identities for those fans deeply invested in it. This paper contributes to the current cultural psychological literature on understanding the mediation of people to symbols in a new digital age.

During the fourteenth century, with the rise of Dol po pa Shes rab rgyal mtshan (1292-1361), the gzhan stong philosophical tradition became a source of great controversy in Tibet. Dol po pa taught this new philosophical tradition for the first time to the wider Tibetan intellectual community. As Dol po pa's Jo nang teachings attracted an audience, many other philosophical giants of the day, such as Bu ston Rin chen grub (1290-1364), Red mda' ba Gzhon nu blo gros (1349-1412/13), and their students composed polemical works to refute Jo nang tradition. Lamp that Illuminates the Expanse of Reality was composed in the midst of this controversy to defend the Jo nang point of view. In it, its author, Gha rung pa Lha'i rgyal mtshan (1319-1402/03), attempts to prove that the Jo nang philosophical tradition is the definitive teaching and the quickest path to achieve the Buddhahood.